


Return

by INMH



Series: hc_bingo fanfiction fills 2019 [41]
Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Blood, Drama, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Riots, Self-Harm, Strong Language, Trauma, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-21
Updated: 2019-10-21
Packaged: 2020-12-22 14:37:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21078449
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/INMH/pseuds/INMH
Summary: Gavin and RK900 go back to work.





	Return

_Time’s up._  
  
_Move it or lose it, asshole._  
  
Gavin had just gotten out of the shower, and was naked except for the towel around his waist. He took it off and examined himself in the mirror, frowning as he hyper-focused on the faded scars on his chest, the larger surgery scars on his hip and knee and arm. It was startling to see how the topography of his body had changed; he hadn’t really taken a chance to look at himself like this since he’d gotten out of the hospital. For a while, he’d even been specifically avoiding it.  
  
It wasn’t terrible, really: He wasn’t maimed, after all.  
  
Gavin hesitated, and then shifted his weight to sit normally onto his left leg. There was a small, noticeable ache in his knee when he did it, but it stayed minor and did not advance to anything crippling. His hip, by association, seemed to be fine.  
  
Alright, he could walk: That was good.  
  
He flexed his left arm: No pain, no ache at all, which was even better than expected from a limb that had been broken twice in a span of four months. Fortunately, both breaks had been clean and attended to appropriately.  
  
Next, Gavin sucked in a deep breath. This was more worrisome than the leg or the arm; he could avoid using those, but he couldn’t avoid _breathing_. But there was no sting, no indicator that his ribs were still broken.  
  
Finally, he clacked his teeth together. The place where that one tooth had been crushed, the remains dug out of his mouth by a dentist at the hospital, no longer sent shocks of pain through his jaw.  
  
So it seemed that Gavin was physically in one piece.  
  
Mentally- _eh_. He’d been cleared by a psychologist, whose professional opinion stated that Gavin was not a danger to himself or anyone else (more than usual, anyway), and was mentally and emotionally capable of resuming his duties as a detective. Gavin’s brain didn’t feel nearly as hopelessly scrambled as it had a few months ago, but it still didn’t feel… Great.  
  
“That’s normal,” The psychologist had said.  
  
“It fucking sucks,” had been Gavin’s flat response.  
  
But hey: He was going back to work today, and maybe a return to routine would do him some good.  
  
Gavin got dressed slowly. He’d gotten up earlier than necessary today, a little too high-strung to keep sleeping once he’d woken up, kind of like a kid on the first day of school. It wasn’t so much that he had any specific anxieties about going back- he’d been in the DPD for over a decade, and this was the first time he’d ever suffered anything significantly psychologically traumatic- but just the general stress about going back to work after being out for so long. He’d had far too much time to get rusty. Chances were that Fowler wasn’t going to assign him anything too extreme today for the sake of acclimation, but hey- being a cop meant going where you were needed, and Gavin couldn’t guarantee that there wouldn’t be a place he’d be _needed_ today.  
  
_Hopefully the fuckin’ Terminator is up to the task._  
  
RK900 had been stoic for weeks after they’d been rescued from that damn torture-chamber they’d been trapped in. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, he’d started to lose his shit a little: He’d burned his hand on the stove (he continued to maintain that it was an accident; Gavin maintained that that was a load of bullshit), and then he’d gone ahead and bashed his head against Gavin’s living room wall for no apparent reason at all beyond the trauma that he _still_ denied having.  
  
“Androids don’t experience psychological trauma,” RK900 had informed Gavin primly afterwards. “We don’t have minds. We have coding.”  
  
The head-bashing incident had been so severe that it had left RK900 bloody (and Gavin’s wall seriously dented) and in need of medical attention. And at the android-hospital, Gavin strongly suspected that he’d had a psychologist-android come to talk to him. He had no earthly idea what RK900 and the robo-therapist had talked about, but he hoped it was enough to- you know- make RK900 _not_ want to bash his skull in anymore.  
  
He’d been cleared for duty too, after all.  
  
Gavin had just gotten his t-shirt on when there was a knock on the door. “What?” He called.  
  
“I was just making sure you were awake,” came RK900’s voice.  
  
“No shit, Sherlock,” Gavin said, stepping forward and pulling the door open.  
  
RK900 looked as pristine and unflappable as the day they’d met.  
  
The bastard.  
  
RK900 cocked his head, looking Gavin up and down. “Are you physically prepared for a return to duty?”  
  
“If Hank Anderson can guzzle alcohol every day for four years and still be able to chase a perp down, I sure as fuck can.” He returned the favor, glancing over RK900’s outfit. “You know you don’t have to wear the same damn thing to work every day, right?” He asked flatly. “Jesus, even Connor’s mixing it up a little: I hear he wore a different tie last week.”  
  
“This outfit is perfectly serviceable to me.”  
  
Gavin rolled his eyes. “Yeah, well, I’d like to throw another layer or two on- maybe some shoes, too, so can you fuck off to the living room and wait for me there?”  
  
“Of course,” RK900 said placidly.  
  
It was the _aggravating, _shit-faced serenity in his tone that made Gavin throw in, as he slammed the bedroom door shut:  
  
“And don’t bash your head on my goddamn wall while you wait!”  
  
[---]  
  
The DPD was the same.  
  
Gavin didn’t know why his brain had thought it would be otherwise: He’d only been gone for a few months, after all. His desk was untouched, nothing moved or missing from it- RK900’s was similarly normal, but to be fair, he really didn’t have any personal items to leave on it.  
  
He received a few greetings, a few surprised exclamations. “Didn’t realize you were coming back today,” Chris had chuckled, clasping Gavin’s hand. He was one of the few officers, apart from Tina, that Gavin didn’t clash with very often. To be fair, Chris was such a level-headed, calm dude that fuckin’ Gordon Penwick would have trouble picking a fight with him.  
  
RK900 received greetings and inquiries about his health mostly as a result of people speaking to Gavin, and then addressing RK900 out of politeness. Gavin didn’t think it was possible for someone in the DPD to be even _less_ popular than he was, but somehow RK900 had managed it; and in a _much_ shorter time than Gavin had, too. It wasn’t that he was rude, or ornery, or difficult- it was that he was _cold_ and supremely uninterested in connecting with his coworkers, and in a job like this, being able to connect, trust, and rely on your fellow officers was vital.  
  
It was also very human, and as RK900 had been saying (_literally_) since the moment they’d met, he was not human.  
  
“Well, look who’s back?” Hank ambled up to Gavin’s desk, hands in his pockets and a wry little smirk on his face. “And here was me, hoping for so long that I’d finally be fuckin’ shot of you.”  
  
Gavin snorted. “The day I leave this department before you is the day I commit hari-kari in the middle of my kitchen and make it look like a murder so that _you_ have to investigate it, old man.”  
  
“Pretty sure we’ll just toss you into a dumpster with the rest of the trash and call it a day, Gavin.” Hank glanced at RK900. “And what about you? You in one piece?”  
  
“I am, Detective Anderson. Androids are generally easier to repair than humans.”  
  
“No shit,” Hank muttered. Louder he said, “Well, welcome back, don’t get killed on your first day back on the job and everything will be kosher.”  
  
Connor chose that moment to walk in, a folder in hand as he made his way to the desk. “Detective Reed,” He said politely. “RK900.”  
  
RK900 didn’t acknowledge him. Gavin looked Connor up and down, and then sniffed out a laugh. “So Chris was right: You _did_ change your tie.” The diamond-patterned black and gray tie that Connor had worn… Pretty much forever, had been replaced by a very dark red one. If Chris hadn’t mentioned it, Gavin probably wouldn’t have noticed.  
  
Connor glanced down. “Oh- Chloe gave it to me.”  
  
Right: He was banging the Original Chloe. Gavin was tempted to ask if that was the android equivalent of banging his grandma, but the insult died before it even started. Gavin found himself curiously uninterested in provoking Connor today; maybe an unwillingness to throw out casual insults was the horrific psychological consequence of the torture.  
  
If it was, Gavin didn’t approve.  
  
He glanced RK900’s way, wondering if maybe he might start one of his usual passive-aggressive sparring matches with Connor in lieu of Gavin’s customary insults. But Gavin was surprised to see that RK900’s LED was dark red, flickering the way it would if something was seriously stressing him out (like being tortured; Gavin had gotten _real_ accustomed to seeing his LED red in the Hostel).  
  
“So, what’s new? Anything get blown up while we were gone?”  
  
“What, did you have the news off for the last month? Did you _not_ hear what that girl from the LAA did to Jericho?”  
  
“Hank, I’ve either been drugged to the gills or sleeping for the last few months. The country could’ve been restructured with a fucking Chihuahua as the president and I wouldn’t know. What happened at Jericho?”  
  
“This LAA girl-”  
  
“Hey, listen up!”  
  
Fowler had emerged from his office, projecting his voice across the bull-pen. Immediately, every officer present stopped what they were doing and turned to face him. “We’ve got a situation brewing downtown: The Liberated Android Alliance was doing one of their protests, Gordon Penwick and his people were doing a counter-protest, and apparently it’s turning into a riot real quick: We’ve got officers responding, but I’m sending some more to help them out. Anderson! Connor! Chen! Marston! Nickels! Bader! I’m sending you- any objections?”  
  
There came a chorus of negatives, a mix of “No, sir” and “No, Captain Fowler.” Hank turned towards Gavin and shrugged before hurrying off after Connor. Gavin wasn’t shocked to not hear his or his partner’s names on the list, but a sidelong glance at RK900 showed that he seemed to be vaguely disappointed: The LAA were the most angry, aggressive, anti-human pro-deviancy androids in existence, and he’d probably been eager to throw down with them.  
  
Later, Gavin would tell himself that he did it because he didn’t want RK900 to sulk around while all the other officers went off to the riot.  
  
More honestly… Hell. Grudgingly, he had to admit that RK900 had looked after him while he was fucked up, and Gavin maybe felt like it would be appropriate to repay the favor in a way that RK900 could appreciate.  
  
“Captain,” Gavin ventured, “We can go too, if you want.” At Fowler’s frown, his questioning look, he shrugged. “We got nothing better to do right now.”  
  
Fowler’s eyes jumped between Gavin and RK900. He’d known Gavin long enough to know how competent he was, how well he could jump back into work after being out for a while. RK900 was more debatable; especially considering that Gavin had told him about the head-bashing incident.  
  
But either the riot was worse than he was letting on, or maybe Fowler was just willing to take a chance on them today, because finally he said “Fine, Reed and RK900: Go ahead and get down there.”  
  
“Yes, sir,” RK900 said clearly, stepping away from his desk and heading for the door.  
  
Gavin followed him, sighing heavily.  
  
_You’re welcome, asshole._  
  
[---]  
  
Gavin had seen a few riots in his time at the DPD.  
  
Most of them had been work-related (and therefore, android-related) and the size and seriousness depended entirely on who made up the original groups. Most of those riots had ended with androids and their owners being assaulted, as well as police-officers and any other first-responders unfortunate enough to get in their way.  
  
The riot they came upon today was intense, but not even close to the worse one that Gavin had ever seen. There couldn’t have been more than three-hundred people present, and that encompassed both LAA and Penwick protestors. Still, what the spattering of people lining the streets lacked in volume they made up for in intensity: People were throwing punches, stomping on people on the ground, and attacking each other with picket-signs.  
  
“Je-sus Chriiist,” Gavin groaned as they got out of the car. “Welcome back to work, here’s a riot to deal with!” RK900 didn’t remind him that he’d volunteered them for this, and Gavin liked that.  
  
As with any large problem, the best solution in this situation was to chip away until the big problem progressively became a smaller one: Gavin and RK900 just dove in and started pulling people apart, ripping the signs out of peoples’ hands and throwing them away, grabbing attackers and pushing them off towards the police vans waiting to be loaded up.  
  
You know, it was sort of poetic: In all the chaos, there weren’t many ways to distinguish who was human and who was an android.  
  
Well- until they started bleeding, anyway.  
  
“Okay, take this and keep it pressed over the cut,” Gavin instructed a human woman with a gash over her eye, handing her his handkerchief. “Just keep the pressure on it and stay here, the paramedics are getting around and they’ll be able to-” Something cuffed him on the back of the head- surprising, but not painful- and Gavin turned to see someone bolting away. “_Hey!_ Okay, stay here and wait for the paramedics, alright? I gotta- _Hey!_ Get back here!”  
  
The woman didn’t seem to be in any immediate distress, and he could see the paramedics working their way towards her, and so Gavin got up and took off after the runner. It appeared to be a woman, and she took a sharp left up ahead into an alley. Gavin sprinted after her, making a similarly sharp turn to enter the alley as well-  
  
_WHACK._  
  
Gavin’s shoulder blazed with pain, and he went hard to the ground on his hands and knees. Fuck, but that had hurt: When he turned to look up, he saw that it was an android (a very recognizable BL100 model) wielding a wooden bat sneering down at him. She’d been hiding around the corner of the alleyway’s entrance, waiting for him to come after her: She’d probably been hoping to hit him in the head with the bat, not his shoulder. “_Fuck the cops!_” She yelled, half to him and half to the sky.  
  
Great, so the LAA was taking cues from their (human) rioting forebears.  
  
Wonderful.  
  
_Peachy_.  
  
“Oh God,” Gavin hissed, pressing his free hand to his shoulder. Of course it had to be the left arm- clearly it hadn’t suffered enough abuse for one year.  
  
Abruptly, RK900 was standing above Gavin and pushing the android back, further into the alley. “Back off!” He barked. It was rare to see RK900 behave with any more passion than a wet towel, but he did know how to mime authoritative behavior when he had to. “You’re under arrest for assaulting an officer!”  
  
The android smirked and raised the bat.  
  
“Bring it, bootlicker!”  
  
Oh boy.  
  
RK900 did not like deviants- hell, he could barely handle the _topic_ of deviancy without getting weirdly aggressive (not that he would cop to being irrational or angry). For once, Gavin might have to be the one to hold _him_ back from cracking someone’s skull unnecessarily.  
  
RK900 went for the bat as Gavin got to his feet, but the android woman swung it out of his reach. “Come and get me! Come and get me!” She taunted.  
  
“Stop!” RK900 ordered, and Gavin saw a flash of red on his temple.  
  
“Need your human to tell you what to do, bootlicker? Can’t think for yourself?”  
  
“_STOP!_” RK900 roared.  
  
Uh-oh.  
  
_Uh_-oh.  
  
Not normal. This wasn't RK900 trying to project an image: This was him losing his temper the way he had at the end of January, the way he had after burning his hand at the end of May; this was RK900 losing _control_, which was rare enough of an event that it made Gavin immediately concerned for his state of mind.  
  
“RK,” Gavin rasped, stumbling after him. “Stop.”  
  
The android swung at him again; RK900 grabbed the bat mid-swing and wrenched it out of her hands, throwing it at the wall of a nearby building. There was a loud ‘crack!’ as the wooden bat made contact with the brick, and Gavin grimaced. Clearly RK900 had put some force behind the throw, and now he was closing in on the android woman with a decidedly threatening bearing. “I am not deviant,” He snapped at her. “I am _not_ deviant, I will never _be_ deviant-”  
  
“RK900, _stop. _Stop, stop, _stop!_” Gavin grabbed him with his good arm, trying to hold him back. “Stop, stop, stop before you do something you regret, just arrest her and get it over with!”  
  
“I am not deviant, I will never be deviant,” RK900 repeated, wrenching out of Gavin’s grasp and backing away. His LED was red, and his eyes were strangely unfocused. Both Gavin and the android woman seemed to realize at the same time that this wasn’t just RK900 losing his temper: He was actually having some sort of episode, like the one he’d had back in January where he’d fuckin’ _flipped out_ at Gavin’s suggestion that deviancy might not be so bad- and Gavin had just been taking the piss out of him, not even posing it super-seriously.  
  
Gavin glanced between them, trying to figure out which issue was more pressing. After a moment’s consideration, he decided to take advantage of the android woman’s unease at RK900’s behavior and grabbed her, wrenching her arms behind her back and cuffing them securely. “You just- Stay here!” He barked at RK900. “I’ll be back!” Once it hit her that she was actually being arrested, the android swore and snapped her teeth at him as Gavin led her to the police van. “You know, lady, you’ve got more in common with us humans than I think either of us wants to admit,” He snarled as he and a patrolman pushed her up into the van. Once the door was shut Gavin said, “You good? You need help with this? Because I have to go get my partner.”  
  
“We’re fine here, go ahead.”  
  
Gavin took off at a jog back towards the alley, and he was vaguely aware of a loud thump-cracking sound before he even got there, but when he turned the corner and saw RK900 on his knees facing the wall-  
  
“Oh, Jesus fucking _Christ!_ Not again!”  
  
Gavin grabbed RK900 and dragged him away from the wall before he could slam his head against it again. The android looked dazed, like he’d beaten his head hard enough to do some real damage; the brick he’d been smacking his head against was crumbling, and bits of mortar and flecks of brick were mixed with blue blood. Judging from the size and depth of the hole, he’d started doing it almost immediately after Gavin had left with their perp.  
  
So great, RK900 was going to have to go to the hospital.  
  
_Again._  
  
Fucking wonderful.  
  
[---]  
  
“Why did you do this?”  
  
RK900 was silent.  
  
It was a repeat of the same incident weeks back: RK900 was in a hospital bed with his head (physically repaired), and Gavin was sitting around waiting to find out when the dickhead was going to be discharged. One of the androids had checked his arm and found that it was fine: It would leave a nasty bruise, but wasn’t broken, so at least Gavin could say that one of them had come away relatively unscathed. Strictly speaking, he didn’t have to be here.  
  
Unfortunately for RK900, Gavin had _way_ more energy and spite in him now than he had when the last incident had gone down, and he intended to use it.  
  
“Do not try to fucking dodge me again, asshole: I will say _literally nothing else_ to you until you answer my question. Every single interaction you and I will have from now until eternity will be ‘Why did you try to bash your skull in _twice_?’ until you answer me. Fucking test me.”  
  
Silence.  
  
There was something different about him this time. The first time he’d bashed his skull in, he’d been calm, cool and collected after being repaired. He’d spoken to Gavin as though nothing had happened, and maintained that he had been suffering from a malfunction caused by the damage he’d taken at the Hostel. He’d seemed totally, utterly unshaken. But now… Now he looked withdrawn. Tired, even; and Gavin had been under the impression that androids couldn’t get tired.  
  
He persisted. “You do know that Fowler could pull you off duty again for this, right? You know he probably _will_ pull you off duty again for this. He doesn’t give a shit if you’re an android, he’ll look at this the same way he would if I tried to actually bash my head against a wall during a case. It’s fucking _disturbing_ and raises a lot of questions about your mental state. You may be an annoying shithead, but I _know_ you’re not stupid. So tell me why you did this.”  
  
RK900 stayed silent.  
  
Gavin huffed, slumping back in his seat and rolling his eyes to the ceiling. “Fine. Stay quiet. I’ll think of something else to say, and I’ll fucking talk until you’re too annoyed to keep silent.”  
  
A beat.  
  
And then, very quietly from the bed:  
  
“I should be deactivated.”  
  
Gavin frowned, and then sat up straight. “What?”  
  
“I should be deactivated,” RK900 said softly. “I’m clearly defective. I shouldn’t be allowed to continue my duties, or existence in the public sector. I should be recalled and deactivated.”  
  
It took Gavin a second to parse through the RK900-talk and grasp his meaning. “What- you think you should be- Are you saying you want to _die?_”  
  
“Androids are not alive, and therefore can’t die,” RK900 supplied, for maybe the thousandth fucking time since Gavin had met him. “I’m saying that I should be deactivated before I malfunction again. Next time there could be more serious consequences for it.”  
  
Gavin’s jaw fell open. “So- So you _want_ to be ‘recalled’ and ‘deactivated’. Because you’re a malfunctioning android.”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“Even if the malfunction can be fixed.”  
  
“These ones clearly can’t be, or they’d be gone by now.”  
  
Gavin didn’t know what to say to that. His knee-jerk response was to embark on the same old ‘Jesus Christ just admit you have feelings and get therapy, you fucking freak’ tract that he’d been slapping RK900 with for the last few months, but it hadn’t worked the other times he’d said it and he knew it wouldn’t work now. It didn’t seem to matter how many androids functioned as regular people in day-to-day life, or how many humans began to accept that fact and roll with it: RK900 still saw androids, and therefore himself, as machines with no free will or emotions of their own.  
  
Nothing he could say would change that.  
  
But he had to say _something_. For better or worse, RK900 was his partner and he’d just basically admitted to wanting to _die_\- after harming himself to an extent that it became a medical concern.  
  
“Humans… Don’t _kill_ each other just because we’re malfunctioning,” Gavin said finally. “And whether you like it or not, your rights and considerations are on the same legal level as a human’s now. You’re not getting recalled and you’re not getting deactivated, no matter how badly you want to.”  
  
“I can’t fulfill my purpose efficiently if I’m malfunctioning. There’s no point to my continued functioning if I can’t do it right.”  
  
Gavin stared at him for a moment. Then he sighed, stood up, and ambled over to the bed. He plopped down on the side of it, sitting with his back to RK900, jamming his hands into the pockets of his jacket. “What you’re feeling right now,” He said, trying to stay calm as he spoke, “Is called _sadness_, and a crushing sense of inadequacy and disappointment in yourself. Lots of people have felt these things before. _I_ have felt these things before. I’d sooner slit my throat and swan-dive into a salt-pit than admit it most days, but I have. These feelings are _normal_ considering what…” He swallowed. “…considering the bullshit that happened a few months back, in the room. With the torture and shit.”  
  
“Androids don’t feel sadness. _I_ don’t feel sadness.”  
  
“You _do_,” Gavin insisted wearily, eyes rolling shut. “You just don’t want to admit it because you’ve got some huge goddamn complex about deviancy and think it’s the end of the world if an android goes deviant. If you just come to terms with it and _talk_ to someone about it honestly, you may find that these ‘malfunctions’ stop happening. Deviancy is not the worst thing that can happen to you, I promise.”  
  
“It is for an android.”  
  
“No, _death_ is the worst thing that can happen to an android- or anyone else, for that matter. Once you’re dead- or ‘_deactivated_’- there’s no going back, there’s no changing, there’s no fixing shit. You’re just gone.” Gavin wasn’t used to delving this deep. He didn’t like it: Being seen as an asshole was much easier than being seen as a decent person. Being nice took effort; being an asshole took much less by comparison, and had the additional effect of keeping people at arm’s-length.  
  
And that was generally where Gavin preferred to have people, if he had to have them at all.  
  
“Just think about it, alright asshole? Use that big android brain to look at your options other than ‘kill myself’.”  
  
“I would not undertake methods to destroy myself without instruction,” RK900 remarked dully.  
  
“Okay, well, that doesn’t make me feel any better,” Gavin grunted. “If anything, that makes it worse. Being required to kill yourself because someone tells you to is fucked up beyond belief.”  
  
“To a human.”  
  
“To _most_ people.” Gavin wanted to ask what it was _today_ that had provoked this reaction from RK900, but he doubted he’d get an adequate answer: Admitting that something he’d seen, heard, or otherwise experienced today had triggered an irrational, emotional response from him would require him to admit that it wasn’t simply a set of ‘malfunctions’ that he was dealing with, and clearly RK900 wasn’t willing to abandon that train of thought yet. There was limited value in interrogating an unreliable historian, and Gavin had already gotten everything he thought he would get. “Alright. Well, they’re sending in another therapist at some point, and you damn well better not complain if they put you on a psychiatric hold. If they don’t, I’ll fucking ask them to. Someone needs to crack your damn skull in a more constructive way.”  
  
RK900 didn’t respond. He seemed resigned, probably because he knew that Gavin was telling the truth: If the law regarded him as having human rights and considerations, then that meant that displaying blatant self-harm behavior would result in him getting (another) psych evaluation.  
  
Gavin rose from the bed, strolling for the door and wondering if they had coffee here. Maybe he could flag down whatever poor KL900 was going to have to try to figure RK900 out and warn them what they were in for. He stepped into the hallway and looked down towards what he thought was the lobby, considering finding someone to ask for directions.  
  
“Gavin.”  
  
Startled, he turned and saw Connor standing there. Connor and RK900’s voices were similar enough (RK900’s was slightly deeper) that for a moment he’d thought that RK900 had gotten up and followed him from the room. “The hell are you doing here?” Gavin asked.  
  
Connor tipped his head towards RK900’s room, thumbing the quarter he carried around and played with from time to time. “Again, huh?”  
  
Gavin’s shoulders sagged. “Yeah. So this would make incident number three so far.”  
  
Connor mulled over that for a moment, idly flipping the coin. “Has he been psychologically evaluated yet?”  
  
“Not yet. I told him I’m gonna tell them about the other stuff- frankly I’m shocked they let him go last time.”  
  
Connor sighed. “It’s one of those key differences between humans and androids: We _can_ experience software malfunctions that cause us to do odd or even self-destructive things, regardless of psychological or emotional trauma. When we’re damaged, the consequences aren’t always as predictable as they are for humans.”  
  
“Yeah, no shit.” Gavin glanced towards the room. “You going to talk to him?”  
  
“I was going to, yes- unless you think it might be a bad idea.”  
  
For a split second, Gavin assumed Connor was being sarcastic because Connor rarely gave a fuck about what Gavin thought he should or shouldn’t do. But no: Connor seemed to be completely serious, willing to abandon course if Gavin thought talking to RK900 right now might be a bad idea. Gavin wasn’t used to him having that sort of faith in his opinion. “If you wanna take a crack at convincing the flightless shit-bird that is my partner to _not_ want to die, be my guest. Because frankly, I don’t think I’ve made a dent in him.”  
  
Connor considered that for a moment, and then nodded. “I’ll give it a shot. I doubt it could make anything worse, after all.”  
  
Gavin snorted. “Good luck.”  
  
Connor disappeared into the room, and Gavin took off down the hall.  
  
Well, maybe Connor could work some robo-magic on RK900; maybe he had the key to getting into RK900’s head and giving him a better grip on reality. At this point, deviancy was the best thing that could happen to him. Might even save his life, if Cyberlife was capable of _ordering_ him to self-destruct.  
  
If those were the stakes, it wasn’t as though RK900 had anything to lose.  
  
-End


End file.
